The Beguiled
Short description
During the American Civil War, a girls' boarding school in Virginia has been largely cut off from the outside world. When one of the pupils finds a badly wounded soldier in the grounds, the headmistress and her sole teacher reluctantly agree to take him in and nurse him back to health rather than hand him over. Once he is confined to a room to recover, his presence unsettles the household: the women and girls, of different ages and temperaments, each respond to him differently, and the rivalries that develop among them change the relationships in the school for good. The film is a remake of a 1971 Southern Gothic drama.
Sofia Coppola directed and co-wrote the adaptation, and produced it with Youree Henley; the writing credits also include Albert Maltz and Irene Kamp. It arrived between A Very Murray Christmas and On the Rocks as the eighth of the eleven features Coppola has directed. Colin Farrell plays the soldier, with Nicole Kidman as the headmistress, Kirsten Dunst as the teacher, and Elle Fanning, Oona Laurence and Angourie Rice among the students. Made for about 11 million dollars, it took roughly 28 million worldwide.
On IMDb it holds 6.3 from around 66,000 votes, and on TMDB 5.9 from over 2,200 votes. A critics' score of 7.2 from 326 reviews is higher than both audience figures, indicating that reviewers responded to the film more warmly than general viewers did.
What's left behind the scenes
- Nicole Kidman and Colin Farrell began working on the film just weeks after finishing filming Yorgos Lanthimos’s drama "The Killing of a Sacred Deer" (2017).
- Sofia Coppola asked Kirsten Dunst to lose weight for the role of Edwina. The actress refused, stating that she hates exercising and had recently been on a diet for another film.
- Some scenes of the film were shot in the vicinity of Napoleonville, Louisiana.
- Nicole Kidman was trained in medical procedures from the American Civil War era by a participant in historical reenactments of that period.
- The film was shot on 35mm film.
- During filming, the cast had a sewing teacher, a dance instructor, etiquette lessons, and were required to cook and eat meals together. A priest explained prayers from the Book of Matthew, and Sofia Coppola gave everyone a book on etiquette from the pre-war era titled "How to Be a Good Southern Lady."
- Producers dreamed of casting an actor “who looked like Chris Pratt.” Ultimately, Colin Farrell was chosen for the role.
- The screenplay was written with Nicole Kidman in mind.
- The mansion shown in the film was also used in the visual album of Beyoncé Knowles' Lemonade, released on April 23, 2016.
- At the lighting director's request, the scene in which Nicole Kidman washes Colin Farrell with a sponge had to be reshot several times. The filming of the scene took approximately two hours in total.
- Filming for the movie took 26 days.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
